New Telescope Projects at CTIO

A number of projects are underway that will place a variety of new telescopes on Tololo and Pachon, covering a wide range of apertures and capabilities. Here is a quick survey of what's in the works now.

2MASS on Cerro Tololo

2MASS is a project to carry out an all-sky infrared survey with 2.0" pixels to 10 limiting magnitudes of J = 15.8, H = 15.1, and K = 14.3. The sole existing large area survey in the near infrared, the Two Micron Sky Survey, reaches only to 3rd magnitude, covers just over half the sky, and contains 5600 objects. With the 25,000 fold sensitivity improvement of 2MASS, it is expected to catalog 100 million point sources and hundreds of thousands of galaxies and other extended objects. Near term scientific objectives include the study of Galactic structure via IR luminous stars visible throughout the Galaxy, galaxies in the local universe (imaged at wavelengths that characterize their underlying mass distribution), and searches for rare objects such as brown dwarfs. Since the most exciting applications of the 2MASS database will probably be unforeseen ones, the Project has a strong commitment to making the completed Survey data available to the community without a lengthy proprietary period.

Two telescopes of 1.3-m aperture are being constructed to carry out the survey. One will be installed on Mount Hopkins, the other on Cerro Tololo. The project is being managed by a group at the University of Massachusetts, with the data product to be produced by the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at CalTech. CTIO is acting as a contractor for construction on the Tololo site, and will play some contract role in operations as well.

On 14 May CTIO scientific, engineering and administrative staff members met with the UMass Project Manager to decide the most desirable site location for the southern 2MASS Telescope, explore practical construction solutions, and discuss the future operation of this telescope on CTIO. These meetings were later complemented with a visit to the designated telescope construction site. A month later, on 14 June, CTIO presented two proposals for the construction of the enclosure and the control room (designs prepared by CTIO and 3M Engineering.) UMASS opted for the CTIO version, which uses reinforced concrete for the enclosure and brickwork for the control room. We are currently working on the civil engineering design detail and statement of work concepts, and plan to commence the construction phase on the first of October.

SOAR 4-m Telescope

This is a project to build a 4-m alt-az optical/IR telescope with active primary and tip-tilt secondary on Cerro Pachon. It is a partnership between the University of North Carolina, Michigan State University, the nation of Brazil (through an internal collaboration of several funding agencies) and the NOAO. Partners will share time in proportion to their investment. The first full meeting of the partnership to finalize the conceptual design of the telescope, define the funding arrangements, and set up an initial project plan is due to be held in Chapel Hill, NC, in late August.

Gemini on Cerro Pachon

After months of work on the foundations, invisible to our scientific visitors, the concrete telescope pier has risen above the Pachon ridge as seen from Tololo, and the steel structure of the dome and building is surrounding it rapidly. A small telescope set up near the 0.9-m enables Tololo observers to watch the construction on a daily basis. Those not fortunate enough to be observing here may visit the Gemini Web site, http://www.gemini.edu/ to see images of the excellent progress of construction on Pachon.

Malcolm Smith (msmith@noao.edu)